


homegrown and leaning onto my love

by banksoflochlomond



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Growing Up, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 04:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banksoflochlomond/pseuds/banksoflochlomond
Summary: Villains are incredibly evil, but they are only evil to people that have enough sense to fight back.A story about Carlos, intentional stupidity, friendship, and honesty.





	homegrown and leaning onto my love

Villains are incredibly evil people.

Carlos knows this before he knows his own name.

Cruella had books lining the walls of Hell Hall. By the time he’s turned six, Carlos has read about half of them, and thumbed through most of the rest. Back in those days, when Carlos was small and skinny and easy to control, Cruella preferred having him around the house so that he could clean and look after her precious furs. Once he turned six, she’d fallen more deeply into her own mind, started having delusions. That was when Carlos started sneaking out to go to school, and when she finally confronted him about it, Carlos just said that she’d allowed him to go. She was too far gone to figure it out.

Villains are incredibly evil, but they are only evil to people that have enough sense to fight back. Carlos reads the historical accounts (and thinks, privately, that they read more like a fairy tale, like Hansel and Gretel, rather than something that’s supposed to be unbiased), and he realizes this. Sees it reaffirmed in the marketplace.

Villains like a challenge. Jafar likes intimidating the baker when the baker fights back against him trying to steal another roll. Maleficent actively enjoys walking down the street and pushing down people who don’t bow to her. In the stories, they liked the challenge, liked the push; they liked a hard-earned victory. Everyone does. (Except Cruella. But. That’s another thing, for later on.)

And that was when Carlos formed his plan.

***

Carlos was known as an idiot, on the Isle.

There were whispers all over the place about it. He’d contracted his mother’s mental disease early; he’d gotten brain damage from the way that Cruella treated him early on; maybe Cruella had been too smart, too cunning, and as a result it was a balance that he was dumb. But it was a definitive thing; Carlos de Vil was incredibly stupid.

The rumors float around: Carlos was threatened by mugging by Captain Hook’s son, and Carlos thought that if he gave his stuff to Harry, they’d be friends. Carlos mistook one of the Evil Queen’s poison apples as an actual apple and was out of school for two weeks. Carlos regularly walks past the Red Light section of town because he thinks the people on the street corners are awfully friendly. Once, he saw a fur coat in Jafar’s shop and thought that it was his mother.

Some of them are true. Some of them aren’t. But what matters is this: Carlos is so dumb, it’s almost cheap to try and rob him.

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still happen to him. Because the Isle of the Lost is an incredibly depraved and deprived society, so no one has anything and when someone has something, everyone else tries to take it from them.

But it’s lesser. It doesn’t happen as much.

Carlos's plan works.

***

Carlos thinks that evilness and cruelty are two entirely separate things.

Sure, they have some overlap. You could squint and see them as the same thing.

But they’re not.

Evilness demands a challenge. It demands something to steal from, something to deprive. It demands prey that runs from it.

Cruelty is worse. Cruelty is entire self-interest.

Carlos read from one of his mother’s books once that self-interest could be a good thing; it kept the economy in check, in a best-case scenario. Carlos thinks every person has some self-interest. Carlos also thinks that his mother was entirely composed of it.

She didn’t care who she affected. She didn’t care about anything except for what she wanted, and when she didn’t get it, she would get delusional. When she didn’t get the Dalmatians, that was probably when she truly lost her mind.

Carlos has countless bruises, countless scars. But he doesn’t get it until she breaks his wrist just because he was in the same room as her, and she was bored. He was seven at the time.

He gets why her name is Cruella, and he gets why she’s on the Isle. Because she might not be the strongest, or the most cunning, but she had something darker rooted in her. Something born out of genius and self-interest.

It scares him.

It scares him that he’s descended from that.

When anyone asks (and few do) about his wrist, Carlos gives a sheepish, blank smile, and says that he thought he could fly and jumped off the roof of Hell Hall.

***

Carlos meets Evie when he's twelve.

She walks in halfway through Yen Sid’s period. Carlos is carelessly bubbling in answers, not even looking at the question. It’s better, he’s learned, to just choose answers at random; it makes the percentage of correct answers somewhat even, and it lessens the chances of Yen Sid catching on to the fact that Carlos is acting purposely stupid. That man’s got a look in his eye that makes Carlos twitchy sometimes, especially when he looks at Carlos.

“You’re late,” Yen Sid says, without looking up from his romance novel. His voice is monotone; this is his last class of the day, and then he’s back to Auradon. He never has to worry about grading anything either; he makes everything on a scantron and reuses tests, so that all he has to do is feed the answer sheets through the machine.

“Sorry, sir,” she says sweetly. “I just enrolled.”

“Ah, yes, Miss Kunigin,” Yen Sid says, setting his dog-eared copy of Love in the Time of Hope and Despair on the desk. “Please, take a seat anywhere. The students are taking a test right now. You can just rest until class is let out.”

Miss...whatever her name was, looks around for a while. She’s got a pointed face, angled eyes and eyebrows, dark, full lips. Probably spends an hour getting ready in the mornings. Gaston’s son, Gill, is already drooling in the back of the room. More worryingly, Mal is sizing her up on the opposite side of the room. That could spell trouble for her.

Surprisingly, her gaze falls on Carlos, and her smile widens. Carlos’s eyes widen a bit, before going back to his test. He’s not trying to catch eyes, especially during school.

Too late. She slides in next to him, dropping her patchwork bag on the floor next to her. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Evie.”

“Carlos,” Carlos says, choosing another answer at random.

She blinks. “Aren’t you going to read the question?”

Carlos stiffens a bit, before saying, “Uh, not like I’d understand it anyway.”

She smiles more. “I heard that about you, you know.”

“Cool,” Carlos says.

“Sit next to me at lunch?” Evie asks.

Carlos drops his pencil and turns to look at her.

Her eyes are wide and dark, and there’s something there. A twinkle that reminds him of Yen Sid. And. That’s risky.

Mal is still sizing Evie up from the other side of the room. It’s definitely not a good look.

And--it’s not as if Carlos is any kind of protection. Quite the opposite. He’s positioned himself as someone who doesn’t know how to fight (of course he does), someone who doesn’t know how to run (of course he does), someone who doesn’t know much of anything at all (in fact, he’s probably more book-smart than most of the people at the school, with the exception of Yen Sid).

But if Evie’s with Carlos, she could be branded as harmless. It's dangerous when she looks like she does (Carlos already runs past sketchy alleys and doesn’t stay out at nights, and he’s a guy), but if Carlos is always with her--well, most wouldn’t attack a girl with someone else there, even if it was Carlos.

Evie sees something in Carlos’s expression. It must be his acceptance, because she smiles wider, shows more teeth.

“Sure,” he says.

“Fantastic!” she squeals.

***

Evie decides that they’re friends.

Which is fair, Carlos supposes. They sit next to each other in all of their classes, and eat lunch together. But eating lunch together and hanging out with each other after school are two different things.

“I really need help on this science project that Yen Sid needs from us,” Evie says.

Carlos blinks. “No one does those,” he says.

“I want to,” she says.

“I mean, I can keep you company,” Carlos says.

“Perfect!” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. Carlos swears he almost sees some of the boys across the hall swoon, which, like, come on. There’s plenty of porn that Auradon throws out because they don’t want to be associated with something so ‘vile’. Not that Carlos does that, but, like, the option is there.

“Oh, but I gotta swing by my house to drop off my mom’s furs,” Carlos adds.

Jafar and Cruella have a deal struck up, where she gets the furs found in Auradon’s dump, and Jafar gets any extra material Cruella has from her failed designs or books she’s decided to throw out. It’s the one thing that Cruella remembers on a day-to-day basis (although she usually thinks that every day is fur day, even when it’s one day a week--which leads to her thinking that he’s lying to her, which leads to generally unpleasant things happening).

“No biggie! I can even come with you,” Evie says.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Carlos says. He has no idea what mood Cruella will be in.

“Why not?” Evie asks.

“I--” Carlos hesitates. He hardly ever disagreed with Evie--it didn’t exactly fit in with his image of an affable buffoon. But he couldn’t let on about Cruella’s fits that left him with cuts and bruises (and sometimes a broken or bruised rib), mostly because he didn’t know how Evie would react, and he wanted a definitive answer to that before he let any information slip. It’s not that he thinks the only one on the Isle being abused (he most definitely was not), but Evie could get angry at Cruella, meaning that she hurts Evie too, or Evie could question how Carlos hid it for so many years, which would be a blow to his persona.

Then there’s the fact that several people hadn’t seen Cruella outside Hell Hall for years. Even Jafar had limited interactions with her. If it was known how delusional Cruella was, then that could put Hell Hall and its contents in jeopardy. It could lead to raids, which would make Carlos’s life harder.

“Carlos,” Evie says, snapping him out of it. She was looking at him weirdly--with a start, Carlos realized he was probably thinking too hard for a complete moron.

“Sorry, what? I think I was asleep or something,” Carlos says.

Evie stares at him for a second. Her eyes had gone a bit darker, and she frowned. “We were just talking about how I’m stopping by with you to Hell Hall before we get started on the science project.”

“Were we?” Carlos asks.

“Unless you think I’m lying?” Evie asks. There’s a note in her voice--something hard, like a sharp note on a piano. With a start, Carlos realizes what Evie’s doing. Someone supposedly as dumb as Carlos wouldn’t question Evie on that. They’d accept what she said, and let it go.

Evie was suspicious.

Maybe Carlos really had been thinking too long.

“I mean, uh, probably not,” Carlos says, trying to sound like his bored, absent-minded self. “Let’s do it.”

“Uh-huh,” Evie says slowly. “Meet me by the gates after school, and we can go to Hell Hall afterward. Get it?”

“Yup,” Carlos says, feeling for all the world like he’d made the wrong choice.

***

Cruella is lounging on the couch when Carlos opens the front door, which was _not_ the ideal beginning to this.

“Boy,” she snaps, “where are my furs?”

“Right here,” Carlos says, opening his backpack and pulling them out. Cruella snatches them up, and frowns. A deep line creases across her forehead, and suddenly she’s shot across the room, and she’s pinned Carlos to the wall, staring him wildly. Her meaty hand grabs at his trachea.

“Not enough,” she growls out.

“All he gave me,” Carlos says, in more of a whisper than in words because she’s definitely crushing his windpipe. _Definitely_ not the way he’d hoped this would go, he thinks in some wry, twisted kind of humor.

“What,” Evie says, “the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Cruella’s head snaps to take in Evie. The way she’s standing, fists balled at her sides. The color of her hair and the princess-cut of her clothing.

Cruella releases Carlos and he leans against the wall, taking deep, even breaths.

“You’re Grimhilde’s kid, aren’t you?” Cruella says, brushing herself off. Her words come out fast, rushed. “Wonderful to see you, darling. Sorry you had to see that, family spats are never pleasant you know, but that’s not the proper way to act in company--”

Carlos vaguely registers that she’s working herself up. He sinks down to his knees and focuses on breathing. It’s always hardest the first few minutes after Cruella’s attack, and then he’ll be able to grab Evie and pull her out of this whole thing.

“Is Grimhilde looking for a designer by any chance? My services are hardly used here you know, I’m first and foremost a businesswoman but business is hard when the economy is so empty here--”

Evie’s chancing glances at Carlos, as if asking if it’s alright to call attention back to him, or if it’ll set Cruella off again. Carlos holds up a finger, and pulls himself to his feet.

“I haven’t talked to Grimhilde in ages you know, but she was telling me how smart you were but how it was a bad thing. I told her I wouldn’t have minded if it was mine--” a cloud passes over her face, “I thought he’d be suitable at first, you know, he read almost every book in this house before he was taller than my knee, but of course he’s fucking _this_ , now, where is he, _Carlos_!”

Carlos pulls Evie out of the Hall and shuts the door behind them.

“Walk slowly,” he tells her. “If she sees someone running past the window, she’ll probably know to follow.”

Evie nods. If Carlos didn’t know better, he’d say that her eyes were watery--why she’d want to cry, though, Carlos didn’t know.

***

Evie’s got a tower, which is kind of insane. It’s a small, circular room--probably no bigger than Carlos’s own room, which is quite small--but the fact that it’s on top of a spiral staircase gives it an extra weight, extra importance somehow.

Carlos asks if they need to watch out for her mother, but Evie shakes her head. “She’s always sleeping,” Evie says quietly. “Says she wants her beauty sleep.”

Carlos nods. He sits in a hammock strung up on the opposite side of her bed. He feels oddly listless, like he should be saying something, but he can’t quite figure out what.

“I’m--sorry,” Evie says. Distantly, Carlos realizes that if he wants to keep up the act, he should say _Fo_ _r what?_ Or say _What happened? What did you do?_

Less distantly, Carlos realizes he doesn’t care right now.

“It’s probably better you were there,” Carlos says, wrapping his arms under his legs. “It’s--she would have gone further, if she hadn’t noticed you. Once, she thought I was a giant fur. That, um, didn’t end well. Probably the closest she’s ever gotten to loving me, though.”

He laughs humorlessly.

“Carlos...” Evie begins, and then, “That’s not what I was apologizing for.”

Carlos shrugs. “Plenty of kids probably deal with it.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Carlos says. “No one knows what ‘right’ is on the Isle, though.”

Evie nods, and they lapse into silence.

Any amount of time could pass--a minute, an hour, a day. Evie’s window is shuttered closed, and Carlos wishes that an entire lifetime on this wretched island could eclipse them in these moments, before the silence is broken.

Eventually, Evie clears her throat.

“So,” she says, “You’re not as dumb as you make everyone believe.”

Carlos looks up and makes eye contact with her, and it feels like the first time he ever has. Her eyes are dark and true and the same as always, but it feels irrevocably different. Carlos is laid bare in front of her--the first time he’s ever been honest with anyone. Carlos breaks the look to stare at her ceiling.

“I guess Cruella ruined that bit,” he says.

“I picked up on it before,” Evie says. “I just wanted you to tell me yourself.”

Carlos looks at her. “Really?”

“Before I went to school, I went out to the marketplace to learn about everybody. The people to avoid and everything. Everyone talked about you like you were handicapped,” Evie says. “But then I went to science and I saw you bubbling in things at random and looking so, so bored, and I realized that you weren’t dumb--you were probably the smartest person on this island.”

“It’s--a defense thing,” Carlos says slowly.

“If you make people think you’re not a threat, they’ll ignore you,” Evie says.

“No one wants to fight a mouse in a war between lions.”

“You’re not a mouse,” Evie says. “Or a lion. You’re like, a fox.”

“Cruella would like fox fur.”

“Cruella is a coward, and she's an idiot. Unlike you,” Evie says lightly.

Carlos looks at her again.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she says quietly. “About--any of it.”

Carlos sits up. “You wanted to work on science?”

Evie smiles.

And Carlos, for once, finds himself smiling back.

***

True to her word, Evie doesn’t let on to anyone else how smart Carlos really is. She’s taken aback, sometimes, how easily he understands certain things. They quickly realize that they’re probably equals when it comes to Chemistry and English, and of course Evie was incredibly talented with anything related to fashion or self-care, but Carlos could pick up quickly on pretty much anything.

“Are you--I mean, do you think you’re a genius?” Evie asks one day, when they’re lounging in Evie’s room. Carlos snorts from his position upside down on the hammock.

“There’s no quantifiable element to the concept of genius,” he says.

Evie grins. “Hearing you say words like ‘quantifiable,’ is hilarious after listening to you pretend to stumble over words more than three syllables long.”

“It wasn’t a good disguise,” Carlos admits. “And if anyone had wanted to, they definitely could have seen through it. But when people see what they want to see...well, then you can use that to your advantage.”

“Philosophy lessons with Carlos,” Evie says lightly, and laughs when he tosses a towel at her. “What do you wanna do today, anyway?”

They’ve been taking more and more time off of school to just hang out together. While school was technically required by law, no one ever checked to make sure that the kids were going. Most did out of boredom and a degree of safety that it afforded, but a lot of the kids could miss school for months or years at a time.

“I’m bored,” Carlos says, watching a lazy sunbeam slip its way into the room. “I’m gonna try and break through the barrier.”

***

Carlos wishes that he could say that it happened just like that, but he’s not a miracle worker.

It takes weeks of planning, pick-pocketing, and outright bartering to get the parts to create his prototype. Which doesn’t work.

 

Evie’s with him, because he needs a magical being with him to make sure that he actually pierces through the barrier. Although he can see the shimmery, golden hue around the cliffs of the island, his aim to to make a tiny pinprick of a hole. Something no one would be able to see, but everyone magical would feel the rush of.

“Give them some hope,” Carlos explains. “Like, they think the barrier is failing.”

“But it’s not,” Evie finishes for him. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were mischievous for playing such a big prank on the entire Isle, Carlos.”

“Too bad you do know better,” Carlos says, smiling at her. “It really didn’t work this time, though?” 

Evie shrugs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I really didn’t feel anything.”

“Ugh,” Carlos says, and goes back to the drawing board.

***

He realizes he needs a transmitter battery.

And that same day, he sees a transmitter battery in Jafar’s shop.

Like fucking destiny.

But of course it’s never easy.

Jafar famously upcharges on everything, and Carlos has precious little money. Especially for something like a transmitter battery--Lady Tremaine may buy it just so that she can say she owns one.

Which leaves him one option.

But stealing from stealers was a terrible idea.

 

But the thing is, Carlos isn’t a terrible pickpocket. Nothing like Jay, Jafar’s son, but he can hold his own.

And he has an established persona of innocence and stupidity.

And, well.

He has to try. He doesn’t know why he’s so hung up on this project, but it’s something he feels in his bones. A feeling like, if he breaks the barrier, he can show himself that there’s a way off this goddamned island. A way he can build for himself.

 

Carlos enters Jafar’s shop.

Jafar’s out, which is the good thing--if Carlos got caught by Jafar, there would be a good chance that he would tell Cruella, which would be a terrible thing for numerous reasons.

The bad thing is that Jay is there.

With Mal.

They’re lounging against Jafar’s cashier counter, practically snarling at the other customers.

When Carlos enters the shop, Mal begins laughing a cruel cough of a laugh, and Jay says, “de Vil! Long time, no see.”

Carlos shrugs. He notices a pile of rings near the transmitter battery, and goes over to pretend to be interested in them. “Hangin’ out with Evie a lot,” he says.

Mal laughs again. “That bitch who pretends to be royal? Makes sense. She’s useless, just like you.”

Carlos sets his jaw forward as he bends down to look at the rings. Feels his nails bite into his palms. Insulting him was one thing, but hearing bad things about Evie was asomething unforgivable, to Carlos.

“What’s a ‘bitch’?” Carlos asks carefully.

Mal practically howls with laughter. Jay needs support against the cashier counter from guffawing.

Carlos nimbly pulls the battery from the table, stuffs it into his front pocket, and stuffs a wad of rings into the other pocket.

“See ya,” Carlos says, turning around too quickly and edging out of the door like he was trying to sneak out. Jay grabs him.

“What are you hiding?” he asks.

“Nothin’,” Carlos says.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Jay says. “Too much of an easy target.”

Carlos sighs, caught out. He pulls the rings out of his right pocket. “I wanted to take ‘em for Cruella,” he says.

“So easy,” Jay sighs, taking the rings back. “How on earth did you survive here for so long?”

 

Carlos pushes open the door of the shop and gets halfway down the street before he realizes that two rings were still resting in his pocket.

Which.

Carlos knew that he’d pulled all of them out to give to Jay. He _knew_ that.

And he didn’t know what to make of it.

***

“Okay,” Carlos says, slotting the battery into machine. “Barrier breaker, part two.”

Evie’s painting her nails with some watered-down tar she’d found. She’d tried to mix it with rotten blueberries to make it into a dark blue, but the result was a black that shone blue in the moonlight. Evie wasn’t a huge fan, but Carlos found the color enchanting.

“Good luck,” she says, blowing on her nails.

“I promise I’ll do your trial face mask with you in a second if you promise to pay attention right now,” Carlos says, rolling his eyes.

Evie sits up, and Carlos huffs out a laugh. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

The machine whirrs, squeaks, and erupts into flame.

 

“Oh--oh fuck, oh fuck, oh _fuck_ ,” Carlos says as Evie grabs onto his arm with a vice-like intensity. “I know I know I know, I’m working on it,” Carlos says, grabbing Evie’s pitcher of water from her nightstand and splashing it over the machine. It began to smoke, but the flames died, so Carlos considered it a success.

“No, Carlos,” Evie says, “I felt it.”

“You what?”

“You broke through,” Evie says, eyes glittering.“I _felt_ it.”

Carlos blinks. “No way.”

She laughs, a bell-like twinkle. “It was incredible.”

Carlos sits back.

“ _Whoa_.”

***

Of course, Auradon authorities come to investigate.

Carlos should have anticipated, but he’s also the first to admit that he never thought it could actually work.

Thankfully, the casing surrounding the transmitter battery in the machine meant that it was salvageable, even if nothing else was. Evie agreed to hide it in her box of old makeup bottles from Auradon, and Carlos tosses the rest of the machine into the ocean.

The Auradon peacekeepers think that it must have been an adult who broke through, so they investigate Cruella and Grimhilde separately, but don’t go to the trouble of interviewing their children.

Oh, the joys of being fourteen.

***

Mal and Jay come to Carlos and Evie, though.

 

“You see,” Mal drawls, leaning against the door stop to Grimhilde’s house, “I talked to my dear old mother about it, and she says the only way the barrier could be broken through was with the help of some kind of electronic device that had a broadcast frequency.”

“And since a transmitter battery recently went missing from my dad’s shop,” Jay adds, “and we only know one science nerd on the Isle, we came here.”

“Who’s the science nerd?” Carlos asks.

“Wow, he’s like a little puppy,” Mal says, while Jay gives him a strange look. “No wonder you keep him around, Snow Blue.”

Evie bristles. “Don’t call me that. What do you want?”

Mal presses her lips together. Jay sighs, and steps forward. “An...alliance, of sorts.”

Evie blinks. “You want to be friends?”

“We think you’d be helpful,” Mal interjects, “on quests, and stuff.”

Evie sighs. “You don’t even know if I’m the one who broke through the barrier.”

“Was it?” Mal asks. Carlos can still feel Jay’s eyes on his face. Carlos fidgets with the leather cord around his neck. It has two rings hanging on it.

Evie hesitates. Almost looks at Carlos, but not quite. “I--yes,” she says, back straightening a bit. “It was me.”

Mal smiles. “Then we’re in business,” she says.

***

Carlos gets looped in to be a part of their crew.

Mostly because Evie insists, even though Carlos swears that he’ll be okay on his own. “You don’t need me anymore,” he tells her, and she just glares at him.

“I’m not leaving you alone,” she says. “You’re my friend. And...I really don’t trust Cruella.”

So.

 

Carlos becomes a part of a friend group. Or, more accurately, a not-quite friend group.

Mal never pays attention to him--he might as well be a body to her, which was fair, to be honest. In her mind, he never factored in as anything useful. Evie was used as a planner, which she could handle, and an inventor, which she could not. She eventually said she had to build things in private to make sure she didn’t make mistakes, meaning that Carlos would make the inventions for Evie to pass off as her own. And Jay--well, Carlos didn’t know what to make of Jay.

He was quite clearly the brawn of the operation, and a good thief to boot. But he seemed to be in the middle of a train of thought of Carlos--like he’d half-turned a key in a lock, but couldn’t figure out how to open the door.

 

Carlos finally realizes what the problem is two weeks after they all start hanging out.

Jay is sent to steal some rolls for the girls, and Carlos is sent along for a lack of anything else to do.

As they creep through the streets, Jay suddenly says, “I didn’t think you were smart enough to sneak around.”

“I grew up on the Isle,” Carlos says in his bored, absent-minded voice. “I may not understand things, but I know how to sneak around places.”

“And steal things,” Jay adds. “You’re damn good at that.”

“I haven’t stolen anything in a while,” Carlos says.

“You stole that transmitter battery,” Jay says. “Right under my nose and everything.”

Carlos freezes for a single moment, before he resumes sneaking down the alleyway. “Wasn’t me,” he says easily, “that was all Evie.”

“Then why didn’t I see her in the shop the same day the transmitter battery went missing?” Jay asks.

“I was sent to scout it out. She grabbed it later,” Carlos says with so much confidence he almost believes it himself.

“Bullshit. She’s not that good,” Jay says.

Carlos sighs. “Believe what you want.”

Jay grabs Carlos’s shoulder and looks him directly in the eye.

 

Jay’s got a good face, Carlos thinks. All symmetrical and broad and masculine, and he’s got really shiny brown eyes. Jay grabs the leather cord and pulls it out from underneath Carlos’s shirt. The two cheap metal rings gleam under the moonlight. Jay leans in close. Carlos doesn’t move.

“Thanks for keeping them,” he whispers into Carlos’s ear. “I hoped you would.”

He runs out to the street corner, and Carlos has to spin on his toes and dash after him so he doesn’t lose Jay.

Carlos knows that Jay hadn’t stolen anything from him, because there wasn’t anything to steal.

Carlos didn’t know why he his chest felt so odd--constricted, and his heart was beating fast, like he'd just gotten mugged, but better, somehow.

***

Carlos tells himself that the only reason he gives back the battery is because he doesn’t have a use for it, anymore.

He tells himself that he wants to make sure that Jay doesn’t deal with too much fallout over losing the transmitter battery, which probably was expected to fetch Jafar a good price.

Whatever the reason, the battery is resting exactly on the table Carlos had originally seen it. He tried to get the placing as exact as possible.

***

Carlos gets yanked into an alleyway on his way to Evie’s.

This happens sometimes--it is a bit annoying, though. He doesn’t have anything in his pockets, and he can only hope that they don’t take interest in the rings around Carlos’s neck.

 

Carlos looks up, and it’s Jay.

His eyes are smoldering, but not in a bad way. In a way that makes Carlos’s knees weak.

“Hey,” Carlos says.

“Hey,” Jay says, and presses Carlos up against the wall. Carlos cups Jay’s face, and Jay kisses him hard. Carlos closes his eyes, lets Jay guide where the kiss goes. He swears he can see stars. Jay smells like sweat and the sage from his dad’s shop, and Carlos nearly melts. Jay breaks away and sighs against Carlos’s mouth.

“You taste like cigarettes,” he says.

“Cruella smokes a lot.”

“Thanks for the battery.”

Carlos looks up. Meets the golden brown of Jay’s eyes. “Kiss me again.”

And Jay does.

***

A few months into Carlos and Evie becoming Carlos and Evie and Jay and Mal, Carlos’s shirt gets ripped to shreds.

It’s during a chase through the square. Carlos’s shirt snags on the sharp edge of one of the butcher’s tables, and it gets all ragged as the seams tear apart, until there’s nothing left. When they finally finish the race, Carlos stands panting with a bare chest.

Evie and Jay have both already seen. Jay, because he’d taken Carlos swimming one day, and had frowned as soon as Carlos had taken off his shirt. But he knew. He knew exactly why Carlos had to deal with it. He even dealt with some of it, too. It didn’t stop him from trying to run away with Carlos, but Carlos had rightfully pointed out that the Isle was small, with no hidden spaces and no way off of it.

But Mal didn’t know.

She stared at his scars, his bruises as he stood panting. Chanced a glance at Jay, before shifting back to Carlos.

“I--didn’t know,” she says.

Carlos shrugs. “Her name is Cruella,” he says, because it is a sick joke, if you think about it.

Jay gives Carlos his vest for some degree of protection, and Carlos brushes his hand against his in thanks.

“Was--” she clears her throat. “I mean, I get it. And Jay does too, um.”

Carlos sighs. “Mal, you don’t have to talk about it.”

“Good,” she says quickly. “But, um. Carlos? We’re here for you.”

He sucks in a deep breath.

“I made the barrier breaker,” he says, and Evie beams at him. “And most of the other things, too.”

Mal nods. “Okay,” she says. She sucks in both of her cheeks, and puffs them out again. “I’m glad we don’t have a weak link in our group,” she says, after a moment.

And that’s that.

***

The perception of Carlos de Vil doesn’t change on the Isle.

He’s still an imbecile, he’s just got more friends now.

And that’s fine with Carlos. He gets robbed less, is treated like a third-grader, and he has a boyfriend.

But he’s still got Cruella.

 

Which is why when they go to Auradon, all together-- It feels like the closest thing he’s ever gotten to happiness.

***

In Remedial Goodness, Fairy Godmother asks Carlos what love feels like.

“I heard you have trouble in school,” she says slowly, “so it’s okay if you need to take your time.”

Carlos looks over at Jay, Evie, and Mal. Rubs at the rings on his neck, absentmindedly. And he comes to a decision.

He turns to Fairy Godmother, and says, “You know I’ve read Kant, right? And Nietzsche, for that matter. Cruella was a big fan of Perspectivism.”

Fairy Godmother looks as if she might faint.

Evie snorts, Mal gives him a thumbs-up, and Jay pulls Carlos into a one-sided hug.

Carlos smiles, and settles into his own skin.

***

Villains are incredibly evil people. But his friends aren’t.

**Author's Note:**

> the rings that jay gave carlos are, later on, their wedding rings.


End file.
